The Atlanta Hawks suffered their third loss in a high-scoring contest against the Chicago Bulls on Sunday afternoon, 152-150. Four players scored 20 or more points for the Hawks, led by Jalen Johnson’s
36 points, 11 rebounds, and nine assists. Trae Young added 35 points and nine assists. For the Bulls, nine players scored in double-digits led by Matas Buzelis’ 28 points.
The Hawks continue to tread through somewhat unfamiliar territory this season, this game representing the second game with Young back in the fold having missed 22 games due to injury. There’s certainly still a ‘feeling out’ process going, particularly between Johnson and Young as both players are clearly trying to adjust to Johnson’s elevated role offensively which emerged during Young’s absence. We’ll discuss this a little more later.
In the meantime, the Hawks began on the back foot as the Bulls ran out to an early 21-10 lead. The opening stretch was a reminder of the not-so-great aspects of Young’s game returning to the Hawks. His defense in the opening stages was particularly poor, leading to a number of early Chicago baskets.
A poor attempt on the steal, allowing Isaac Okoro to get in rim-side and score a very easy basket:
While this next lapse didn’t lead to a basket, it’s just poor defense from Young which allows Josh Giddey a look at three, which is missed:
Young, again, loses Okoro on the perimeter carelessly, and Giddey finds Okoro for three despite the challenge of Dyson Daniels:
For what it’s worth on this possession, I don’t think Young should ‘get away’ with this defensive lapse in justification for sticking to Coby White on the perimeter — that part of the play doesn’t unfold until much later after Young has already just given up on covering Okoro.
Young adds a lot of positives for the Hawks offensively — all of which were showcased in this game: scoring, getting to the free throw line, and a high number of assists to a low number of turnovers — but, sadly, this part of his game also accompanies all of those other good aspects of his game.
And to be absolutely clear: Trae Young was not the only reason the Hawks were so poor defensively in this game. This is just to highlight a bigger picture defensive issue the Hawks face with Young in the starting lineup to begin the game compared to how the Hawks fared defensively when the Young was absent.
The Hawks quickly cut into this early Bulls advantage in part thanks to a 15-point first quarter from Onyeka Okongwu behind three three-pointers and 6-of-7 shooting. However, the Bulls would again extend their lead to double-digits to take an 83-73 advantage into the locker room. Both sides were rolling offensively — the Bulls shooting over 60%, the Hawks shooting 55%, and both teams hitting 12 threes in the first half.
“It’s tough winning games when you give up 80 points in the first half, kind of embarrassing in a sense,” said Jalen Johnson. “We’ve just got to get better and we’ll see them again in two days. Hopefully we cut down on some of the things we were doing.”
Both sides exchanged blows for much of the second half, with the Hawks eventually retaking the lead of the contest in the fourth quarter. However, the Bulls made a run and put enough distance between themselves the Hawks to change the dynamic of the game — one the Hawks spent the majority of the fourth quarter chasing. Matters got particularly grim with under a minute to go, beginning with a Giddey three which puts the Bulls up four points:
While Giddey is initially Young’s man on defense, this possession is poorly communicated defensively. Young does well to keep up with Giddey on the drive, and the help from Daniels helps prevent Giddey from backing out of his failed drive on Young. Simultaneously, Nickeil Alexander-Walker does well to rotate and cover White in Daniels’ place. Okongwu then rotates away from Nikola Vucevic in the corner in order to plug the gap in front of the rim to cover the driving Tre Jones.
All of this has gone well for the Hawks so far; everyone’s done their defensive job so far, but Daniels now leaves the wing and is drawn to the drive, leaving Young in a rough spot on the wing between Giddey (a 40.8% shooter from three this season) and Vucevic (shooting 38% from three). Young elects to cover Vucevic, and Jones finds the open Giddey for the three. Daniels, I don’t think, covered himself in glory on this play — he probably didn’t need to get drawn into the paint here.
The Hawks’ response is suboptimal, as Johnson drives inside before his intended pass is intercepted by Vucevic, fueling a fastbreak led by Giddey, who finds Okoro for the basket plus the foul:
You can see how this play was about to set up: a screen from Daniels to prevent Vucevic from being able to close out an open corner three from Okongwu (a corner where he shoots over 40%) but the play is telegraphed before the opportunity is given to him. The ‘and-1’ from Okoro in transition adds insult to injury on what was already a tough sequence for the hosts, though Okoro misses the free throw.
The game seemed all but over after Young misses a quick attempt at a reply from three, returning the ball back to the Bulls leaving the Hawks to foul:
White splits the free throws, but the Bulls hold a strong lead of seven points with 48 seconds remaining. The Hawks begin to make inroads through two Johnson free throws after a miss from three from Alexander-Walker:
The Hawks continue to play the foul game, sending White back to the line where he, again, splits the pair. The Hawks, now gunning for threes, initially attempt a three in the corner from Okongwu. Johnson collects the long rebound after the miss, and the Hawks move the ball well to return it to Young, who hits the corner three to reduce the lead to three points:
White is sent to the free throw line and, again, can only split the pair. The Hawks, now running out of time with the shotclock turned off, grow a little desperate as Young and Okongwu cross paths in the corner, before Okongwu finds Johnson, who hits a very tough, contested three to bring the lead down to one point with six seconds remaining:
Even if the Bulls hit both free throws, the Hawks were now trailing by one possession. Buzelis is the player who is fouled this time, but he can only split the pair, giving the Hawks a chance to tie with a two or win with a three. Out of the timeout, the ball is inbounded to Young, who tries to turn the corner, tries to draw to the foul as he puts the shot up. However, the shot is missed and the foul is uncalled, and the Hawks’ comeback falls short:
“We always thought it was the last play,” said Hawks head coach Quin Snyder of the final play. “Curl for Trae in the lane; how the in-bounder plays the pass is a big part of whether you’re able to receive those passes. He backed up, took that initial pass away, run down the floor, Trae gets his floater. He did a good of reacting to that and bouncing back. Those are shots that he makes. It’s always hard to get a wide open look at the end of the game. You feel good about getting the ball in the right guy’s hands. If he couldn’t get it inbounds there was a back end for JJ.”
The initial shot here would appear to indicate Young and the Hawks have a legitimate gripe, but looking at other angles the contact from Giddey is so minimal, and this was a very optimistic hope from Young to get a foul call for that. It’s quite disappointing in the end, and the game ends drably after what was a spirited Atlanta comeback after all those big threes.
Ultimately, this was a game where defense truly seemed optional. The Bulls’ 152 points ties an NBA season-high for points scored in a game this season. While the Hawks poured out 150 points themselves and, in one sense, can consider themselves unfortunate, as teams this season are 54-5 when scoring 136 or more points. However, their defense was porous for the majority of the night, conceding 20 three-pointers and 26 points in transition. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the Hawks’ transition defense was a point of focus for Hawks head coach Quin Snyder.
“I think in the first half we had a lot of breakdowns from an execution standpoint,” said Snyder. “Both teams shot it well, but we have to do more to try impact the percentage where shots aren’t quite as clean. I thought we did a better job of that in the second half as far as making them work harder. In the first half our transition defense wasn’t as good as it needs to be. By and large, we need to be better defensively. It wasn’t one particular thing that impacted it but it was a lot (of things that impacted the defense).”
Trae Young commented on the nature of how both teams play, and the trend he has noticed of opponents playing against the Hawks.
“Both teams played fast,” said Young. “Teams are coming in here and playing fast against us and we’ve got to figure out how to stop teams that can only play fast beating us this way. They’ve had our number the last couple of years playing this type of way, and we’ve got to figure out how to stop it for the next game.”
The Hawks will square off against the Bulls on Tuesday, so there will be a chance to take immediate learnings from this game and apply them, and hope the result isn’t similar. Both teams are extremely unlikely to score 150 points apiece again in a short space of time after making adjustments. Similarly, the Hawks will have to hope for the strong individual games they saw on Sunday afternoon.
Young had himself a very notable game, scoring 35 points on 10-of-15 shooting from the field, 7-of-8 from three, and 8-of-9 from the free throw line in just his second game after returning from injury.
Young is operating on a minutes restriction, limited to just 26 minutes. Young was asked how he felt postgame, commenting that he could’ve played more had the Hawks allowed him to.
“I felt amazing,” said Young. “They (the coaching staff) do their job and putting me right around 26 minutes. That’s all I had tonight, they weren’t allowing me to do any more. I felt great, I could have played some more.”
“Everybody is excited to have Trae back,” added Jalen Johnson. “He’s been out for a while, so the fact he found his rhythm in the second game is a good sign. We’ll look to keep building with each other, keep getting our chemistry together.”
Young hit seven threes on Sunday, smashing his previous season-high of two threes in a game — albeit in a very small sample size. However, seven threes is the most Young has hit in a game since December 29th 2024, where he hit seven threes in a win against the Toronto Raptors. While Young’s output was high, it didn’t result in the victory Young desired.
“It was good, not good enough because we didn’t win the game,” said Young. “For me, that’s all I care about. I’ve put up numbers before, but we’ve got to win. Tonight, we couldn’t get enough stops. 150 points is plenty enough to win a game. It’s not like they were stopping us at all, we weren’t stopping them in transition points. We’ve got to figure out how to get back and stop them from scoring fast.”
Jalen Johnson, meanwhile, scored 36 points on 12-of-20 from the field, 2-of-6 from three, and 10-of-11 from the free throw line. Johnson’s scoring picked up on a couple of occasions while Young was off the floor, both in the first half and in the second half. This is going to be really interesting to monitor going forward; to see if Johnson feels he can operate at his best while Young is on the floor, or if he can only be at his best with Young off the floor. Up until the fourth quarter of this game, it certainly looked like a theory that needed to be tested further.
However, it was debunked somewhat in the fourth quarter as both Young and Johnson scored 11 and 13 points respectively in the fourth quarter. It’s an on-court partnership the Hawks have clearly discussed and want to see succeed.
“I thought Trae and JJ really found a rhythm together,” said Snyder. “We’ve talked about that the last few games. That was good to see.”
Young outlined, in detail, the dynamic between himself and Johnson, and what Johnson brings to the table offensively, and how Young can play with Johnson in order to seek double teams, which Young believes are key.
“Me and Jalen have a connection since the beginning of last year,” said Young. “Before he got hurt last year we were a really good team and had a really good connection. If you double me and I’m able to throw it to Jalen, Jalen can make plays out of the double team or in the middle of the pocket and can find others. That’s the name of the game: how many guys on a team can draw two? When you can create an advantage and make it 4-on-3 on the back-side, that’s the name of the game and then everybody else has to make plays out of that and you’ve got to live with the results. When you have a guy like Jalen who, if I come off the screen and they’re doubling, now you have to pick and choose. Just getting more reps with each other, this is our fifth game together this year. We’ve got other guys around that we’ve got to continue to bring along with us that make plays outside of me and Jalen. Obviously we want to play as much with Jalen and I, because he creates so many advantages for us. I’ve just got to continue to get him the ball in the right spots.”
The dynamic between Young and Johnson pre-and-post Young injury has clearly changed, and will need to evolve. The Hawks and Johnson can’t go back to how it was prior to Young’s injury, having seen what everyone has seen from Johnson in Young’s absence. Their continued time together on the court, how each picks their moments offensively, are going to be carefully curated in order for games like this one (where they combine for 71 points) can occur more frequently. Both, however, will need to do more defensively: neither can say they enjoyed a good defensive game in a game where defense was obviously a defining factor.
Johnson poured out those 36 points despite taking a scary fall in the second quarter on a drive to the rim, challenged by Zach Collins. Johnson briefly exited the game before returning, and admitted to feeling the effects of the fall.
“(Felt it) a little bit but I’m good,” said Johnson of feeling the effects of the fall. “The adrenaline was flowing, I’ll probably be a little sore tomorrow but I’m alright.”
Another player who sustained an injury and played through it was Vit Krejci, who enjoyed a hot shooting game. Krejci had hit five threes before dislocating a finger on his left-hand. Krejci would return, hit another three, but cooled off after the dislocation. Krejci would finish with 20 points, shooting 6-of-10 from three. Both his efforts, and that of Johnson, playing through injury did not go unnoticed.
“Those were both significant plays,” said Snyder of the injury scares. “We weren’t sure if JJ was going to come back into the game, same with Vit shooting the free throws. Both of them, there’s a level of toughness that’s required to that. It’s hard to shoot the ball like Vit did early after he dislocated his finger. Courage. He hit another one, he missed a couple. With JJ, he found a way to stay focused and compete, and you figure that part out after the game.”
Elsewhere across the roster, Zaccharie Risacher enjoyed a good game, scoring 17 points on 6-of-11 shooting from the field, and 4-of-7 from three in 24 minutes, while Onyeka Okongwu scored a productive 23 points on 10-of-18 shooting from the field, 3-of-7 from three, seven rebounds, and six assists. Both really chipped in across the board, particularly Okongwu who was faced with a tough matchup against the significantly larger Nikola Vucevic. There were struggles for Alexander-Walker, who shot 3-of-12 from the field, and while Dyson Daniels shot 3-of-9 from the field, he contributed nine assists and two steals in 39 minutes.
Ultimately, this game was not lost due to individual contributions, or poor shooting nights. Defense was the name of the game, or lack thereof. While certain individuals are always going to be more prone to contributing to defensive breakdowns, it was a team-wide issue last night. The Bulls, to their credit, had contributions all across the board, but their life was made far too easy by the Hawks on Sunday.
The Hawks (15-15) are back in action on Tuesday against the Bulls (13-15) back in Atlanta — an opportunity to right the many defensive wrongs of this contest.
Until next time!
